Podcast: Humanising PLM and QR_'s internal training SharePLM — 13 October 2020 Myriam Jenny — Senior Consultant, SharePLM (Host) Rob Ferrone — Founding Director, Quick Release_ This is a machine-generated transcript, lightly tidied for readability. Speaker attributions and paragraph breaks have been added; the substance of the conversation is preserved. --- HOST INTRO: Welcome to the SharePLM podcast, the show that explores the vast universe of product lifecycle management. The purpose of this podcast is to share our knowledge and that of other experts in the PLM world. Each episode, you'll hear fascinating interviews, actionable tips, and strategies that will help you choose, implement, and boost your PLM strategy. Here is your host, Myriam Jenny. I'm a senior consultant for SharePLM. MYRIAM JENNY: Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the SharePLM podcast. I'm Myriam, your host for this episode. Today I'll be talking with Rob Ferrone — I say it with the Italian pronunciation; maybe you've heard him as Rob Ferroni. Rob is the co-founder and director of Quick Release, which I'm going to call QR for short. He'll tell us more about what QR is and what they do, but let me give you a brief introduction. QR is an innovative and dynamic company focused on helping OEMs and companies get products to market faster and at a lower cost. How do they do it? They release engineering and automotive professionals from the burden of product data management and the drain of underperforming programmes, freeing them to create, innovate, and get products to market faster. In today's episode, we're going to talk a lot about change management, and mostly about training. We'll talk about training in the context of QR having helped many, many companies navigate the delicate and difficult part of PLM adoption — PLM user adoption — but also about training with their own employees. QR has a very innovative, very complete training programme for its own employees, with a lot of different activities that enable them not only to get new employees up to speed very quickly, but also to keep the current employees constantly upgrading their skills and learning more. I think many of you will be able, in today's episode, to be inspired by some of QR's training activities and strategy, and maybe that will inspire you to implement some of them in your own context. So I hope you'll enjoy this episode. I'll see you at the end. --- MYRIAM JENNY: Hi, Rob, thank you very much for being on our podcast today. To start, can you tell us a bit more about Quick Release — mostly, what do you do in the PLM sector, and what are some of your services? ROB FERRONE: Well, thanks very much for having me on your podcast. Quick Release is a company that started in the early 2000s. We saw there were a lot of systems popping up in the space of complex product engineering and development, and there was a tension between having to feed information into these systems — in order for people to have overviews and actually get things processed — and the fact that effort was being put onto engineers, who were being burdened with the responsibility for that. In my first role, before it was even called Quick Release, I took over the bill of material management, change management, and issues management. It worked really well because I understood the systems, I understood what needed to happen to get information to go. I could interact with engineers, I could talk to management in their own language about where things were in the system, and they trusted me because they knew I was on top of it. It was, if you like, a great constellation so that engineers could then be engineers, while all the changes went through the system to address the issues that came up. Quick Release is really just a scaled version of that. These days we've got a much broader understanding of the industries and the systems, and also the things that need to happen at the different phases of the lifecycle. We can not just do the work — we can advise and consult. And we've got a number of tools which enable us to do these things more effectively and connect systems together, so it's less of a people interaction and things are being done smarter. That's really the background behind Quick Release and why we exist. MYRIAM JENNY: In the kind of engagements you have today, which part of the PLM strategy do you feel companies still struggle with the most? ROB FERRONE: We're in a great position because we've got a view of the lifecycle really from start to end — products into service, and then how that feeds back around again. The thing most companies struggle with is actually tying it all together. That's definitely where things are going at the moment. Whether you call it digital thread, digital twin, connected enterprise, or PLM — it's how you knit that together. How you take disparate teams who have their own objectives, their own focus, their own daily pressures, and get them to think beyond their roles and their departments, to think about the enterprise, and how they can create value and stitch the organisation together so that the whole is smarter. MYRIAM JENNY: So it's still having that big-picture perspective that most companies are struggling with. ROB FERRONE: Yes. People have the concept — you have people that understand the potential for PLM — but it's how you actually implement that. When you look at big businesses, they're split into different groups. You've got legacy systems, and these aren't just things you can swap in and out. And even with greenfield companies, they don't know what they don't know. They don't know what to put in place. Also, everyone is unique, so what might work for one company doesn't necessarily work for another. It's a big, big thing to do. It's the challenge of this decade, if not a period of fifty years. --- MYRIAM JENNY: Can you tell us a bit more about — I don't know if it's something you also encounter in some of your projects. At least it's a topic we work a lot with: user adoption of PLM. We often find that people resist it, or aren't really willing to change the way of doing things, to move from one system to another — or they have a very negative perception of the PLM. Is that something you also encounter? ROB FERRONE: Sure. And it's not just with products — it's in daily life. Whenever we buy anything and have to use it for the first time, very few times is it super intuitive. Everyone's got the experience of using an iPhone or whatever their go-to device is, and there'll be things that are intuitive about it. You get help and direction at the point where you need it. When it works, it's fantastic — you think, this is brilliant. But that hasn't yet rolled out to other parts of the industry and the world of systems. Change in itself is something there's a lot of science around. People don't inherently like change, and then there's the layer of complexity that comes with having to learn. There are lots of different approaches to it, but ultimately this is something that is often really underestimated. A lot of focus and effort goes into creating the digital plumbing, if you like, that gets information from one place to another — but most of the time, people forget about the human element. Ultimately, it's humans that are creating the value, whether at the creative end of the process, at the manufacturing end, or in sales and ongoing service. How do these people interact with these systems? How are these systems introduced to people? It's really, really undervalued. It's almost an afterthought in many cases. MYRIAM JENNY: Why do you think that, for example, the CRM industry has done a lot of work to make things more user-friendly and improve the interface — why do you think it's still lagging in the world of PLM? Or do you think it's still lagging? ROB FERRONE: No, I do. Every time I see these PLM systems, I'm shocked at just how un-user-friendly they are. For someone like myself — I wouldn't say I'm a digital native, but I get to work with really user-friendly interfaces much of the time — I'm surprised this isn't commonplace and standard, and that you don't have people thinking about it more. Maybe it's because the domain of CAD tools and PLM was always this specialist part of the business. The thinking was that these specialists would be OK using these slightly clunky, unfriendly interfaces. But the reality is that if you're trying to connect businesses together and you want people in purchasing, finance, marketing — interfacing with these tools, and you want to create that connected enterprise — it needs to be user-friendly. It needs to be something everyone can get on board with. They shouldn't need five years of experience with a tool in order to get the information they need. --- MYRIAM JENNY: I'm interested to know more about your internal training, because you once told me you hire many people from a variety of backgrounds — some not from an engineering background at all. How do you train them to become experts in the field in the most efficient amount of time? ROB FERRONE: The background is that we really struggled to find people on the market that fit with what we do. You have a lot of people out there with experience in a certain system, or you might have someone with experience in automotive engineering. But we think we're a unique breed of professional. You need people who understand the idea of getting information to the right people at the right time, in the right format, to drive the right actions or outcomes. They need to be able to understand this abstract data-and-process world. And the logic — the core principles — can be applied to any industry. So there's one challenge around how you teach people that this world of bills of materials and PLM and PDM exists. And secondly, how do you then very quickly get them up to speed with complex products, so they understand how aeroplanes, ships, trains, and cars are made. We home-grow our talent. We source very, very smart people — we look for people from the top classes of the top universities. We also look at attitude. We know 50% of the job is human, so you can't just have people who are great with data and abstract thinking; you need people who can communicate and interact with other people, and who are personable. Then we've got this thing called Boot Camp, which is a four-week residential training. It has two functions: one, to get people up to speed with the world we operate in; and secondly, it's a great place to forge relationships and build the culture that's core to Quick Release. In those four weeks, we start very high-level — the idea that digital thread and digital twin exist — and then we go further and further into detail, breaking it up into sections: engineering change, bill of material, configuration management, and so on. At the same time, we're doing workshops around human interaction skills — putting them in situations where they have to improvise, getting them to understand the business model of the company. At the end of Boot Camp, they come out as really capable people. You can put them into a project team and they can start supporting and being really effective already. But the learning carries on from there. We've created a PDM Professional Framework which supports them through the rest of their career at Quick Release. --- MYRIAM JENNY: Rob, you were telling us a bit about the PDM Professional Framework. I'm wondering more concretely — after Boot Camp, how do you actually give training to your employees? Is it all face-to-face? Do you also use online tools? ROB FERRONE: Yes. We've created Playbooks for each of the modules within the PDM Professional Framework. These Playbooks are blended learning, because we understand that you can tell someone something, but they have to experience it to really embed it. There are lots of different ways of experiencing it, and lots of different ways of learning, so the Playbooks cover a multifaceted approach. As we've grown — we started in Germany and the UK, but now we're based in Australia and the US as well, and continue to grow — we realised face-to-face training wasn't going to be the way we could reach everyone in the future. So as part of these Playbooks, we needed content that was reachable around the world, in whatever time zone. One thing we found really powerful was interactive e-learning. It enabled the team to consume information in a way they're used to consuming information — a lot like going online to find information, but really interactive, with gamification built in as well. It helps embed the learning, because people are not just reading or being told something — they're learning by doing. SharePLM are great in this space, and you've created some PLM modules for us which have been very popular. The team have really enjoyed that, and we've had great feedback about that learning experience. MYRIAM JENNY: I'm glad to hear that. In terms of gamification, I always found it very interesting. Can you tell us more? How do you put it into practice? ROB FERRONE: It's interesting. Within the culture of Quick Release, I'm always surprised at how you can introduce a game into anything we do, and get such strong engagement from the team. I've seen this firsthand in some of the training modules at Boot Camp, where senior people in the business are delivering training to talk about things from firsthand experience. Whenever you create a bit of competition between two groups, it really spurs people on to perform. You've got the element of competition between individuals — if you show people what other people are achieving, they get really motivated. If one person has done something in a shorter time or got higher points, that seems to motivate people. But there's also internal individual competition — where people have to solve a problem, or produce something creative, or hit a certain level of quality. People really get stuck in. That seems to be a big motivator for the type of people we have in the business. They like a challenge, they're curious, and they're just natural high performers. MYRIAM JENNY: Do you use some of those techniques when you're working on a change management project for clients — when you're trying to get PLM adopted, to motivate users? ROB FERRONE: Yes, absolutely. There's a whole science to organisational change management. I've posted before about gamification — whether it's introducing a new system or a new way of working, and how that's a motivator and a way to bring people on board in a light-hearted way. Someone made a comment once that you shouldn't be playing games with important products or processes — for example, engineering change management. But we're human at the end of the day. One of the first things we did when we were learning to crawl was play. It's such a natural instinct for us — to play, explore, be curious, interact with other people in a playful way. If you can tap into those very natural, basic human instincts, you'll get people on board on an emotional level. Once you've got them on board at an emotional level, then it becomes a lot easier to get them on board at a logical level. MYRIAM JENNY: Exactly. I think that's one of the weak points I often see in software implementation generally — we only think about it in a rational way. We're like: OK, if we give them the training, if we give them the user guide, that should be enough, they'll get up and running. We always forget that our emotional brain is actually much bigger than the rational one. That's something we need to take into consideration. ROB FERRONE: Absolutely. The people who will be successful with technology implementations are those who understand, as you just said, the emotional brain is bigger than the rational brain. MYRIAM JENNY: If it were the opposite, we'd have no problem waking up at 6 a.m. and going for a run, every morning. Not having that bar of chocolate. ROB FERRONE: Correct. Exactly. --- MYRIAM JENNY: I'm curious about your experiences. What you do as a company is so important in terms of getting businesses to derive value from their very expensive investments in technology. What are some of the things that are working for the customers you're working with? MYRIAM JENNY: One aspect we see is often lacking is that users don't really have a good understanding of the big picture — how PLM fits into everything. Mostly they don't understand how they play into the whole process, how them inputting data into the PLM is going to affect people from another team. They feel like they're in a separate little unit. The moment we start explaining how everything is connected, and how they're actually helping people along the line, that makes them feel they're part of a community — part of something bigger than just this boring system they have to use. That really helps. Another important point for users is understanding "what's in it for me". Often when we introduce a new PLM, we only talk about the generic benefit — what it's going to do for the company. Users don't always have a clear idea of what it's going to do for them. As a designer, how is that system going to make my working day easier? How is CAD integration going to make it faster? So it's about understanding, for each group of users — because obviously you won't be able to do it at an individual level — the "what's in it for me", and getting that emotion going. Those personal benefits, those "oh, I'm going to save time, it's going to be much more transparent" moments. It's also a lot about how we communicate about the system, and trying to take an approach and a tone that's more human. Less about "yes, it's going to create a 10% increase" — no one gets motivated by that. It's changing the speech, and also making it clear for people how they fit into the picture. ROB FERRONE: Yes, absolutely. Great examples of really good thinking. When people talk about system implementations, they understand the IT and the technology and how things work at that level — but you're dealing with people, and ultimately these systems don't run themselves. They need people to work with them, so you really do need to understand how people work. And as you said, approaching it from the perspective of "what's in it for me" and "how's this going to help me" is the right way. The reality is that if you're trying to put something onto people which, in terms of what's in it for them, is only going to mean more work and more administration — then you really have to think about what you're doing and ask: is this the right thing to do? MYRIAM JENNY: That's true. That's why unfortunately we usually come after the PLM has been implemented. But normally a change management effort starts right at the beginning. It's trying to be the person who basically bridges the gap between the people developing the system — in their own little technical bubble — and the actual users, and to see: OK, if this is only going to make their life harder, is it really worth it? It's all about not forgetting we're building tools for humans. Sometimes we get a bit too focused on the technology, and we forget the essential component of the systems. ROB FERRONE: I love what you're saying, Myriam. It resonates with me 100%. --- MYRIAM JENNY: I was wondering also — how was the experience of QR employees during the Corona crisis? I imagine you were also confined. Did your employees already work remotely before that, or how did it change your way of working? Is it having a long-term effect? Have you changed the way you were working after the quarantine? ROB FERRONE: How has coronavirus affected Quick Release? We were already working in different countries and different time zones — Australia, the US, Europe — and even within a single country we had different offices, and different people on site within customers. So we were used to working remotely from each other. Part of the QR culture is a great digital communication network. We work a lot with Slack — we've found that really effective to get the personalities and the emotion and the fun across. It seems to work quite well and fit our culture. One way it has impacted us is we haven't been able to work on site with customers in the same way for the last few months. It's beginning to trickle back, but this contact with the people we're working with is so important. We've done a really good job between ourselves and the customers to maintain that continuity. It's been surprising that everyone has been able to work remotely, and there's been some innovation as well, in the way people are collaborating and using tools to work efficiently together. MYRIAM JENNY: It's been challenging for everyone not to have face-to-face interaction. In terms of innovation in communication, can you share some examples? ROB FERRONE: Most of it is around the tools that replace being able to be in the same room. There have been evolutions to web-based communication tools — most of them have whiteboards now — and there are dedicated tools where you can get people to collaborate on the same information. We'd just switched over to the Microsoft suite, and that's obviously great for document collaboration, so you can edit things at the same time. It's accelerated some initiatives, and people have been using the full suite of functionality associated with some tools. Plus there have been some new ones. MYRIAM JENNY: Have you tried — I don't know if you've heard about it — VR glasses, virtual reality? You can now do meetings with it. Everyone's going to have their own avatar, and you're in a fictive meeting room. Have you tried that? ROB FERRONE: Many of these tools try to recreate real-world environments. I think there are some instances where that would be really valuable, and some where it's unnecessary — in the same way you wouldn't try to recreate the experience of riding a bicycle in a car: two different environments. Some instances it will work, some I think people should just get on with the technology. The closest we've got to that is in Microsoft Teams, where you've got the functionality to have the people in the conference set up as if they're in a lecture theatre. MYRIAM JENNY: Yes, I see which one. --- MYRIAM JENNY: Talking about disruptive technology — I don't know if VR is still disruptive — what are some of the technologies you're seeing in your current work that are starting to challenge current PLM systems? ROB FERRONE: There's always been a never-ending stream of systems and tools and IT products. Now more than ever, everywhere you look there's someone trying to market a tool that will help businesses either achieve their Industry 4.0 vision or digitalisation or PLM. There are good ones, there are bad ones. Some people might have success with one product where others use that same product and aren't as successful. The thing that's missing is the integration and the work that goes around the stuff you need to do before putting a system like that in place, the stuff you need to do while you're putting it in place, and the stuff you need to do afterwards. There's just not enough innovation and thinking and activity going on in that space. That's where the area is ripe for disruption — but in a positive way. MYRIAM JENNY: What do you mean exactly by what you put in before the system? Can you elaborate? ROB FERRONE: Sure. In terms of what you'd put in place before you implement a system, during the implementation, and afterwards — a lot of it's thinking. Taking a good look at the business and saying: not having the tool in the forefront of your mind, but in the back of your mind. No one should be doing anything with any tools unless they've done all the prep work beforehand. It's really looking at the business and saying: what's going on in our business? Where do we want to be? What do we need to fix already? Because if you put a new tool on broken processes, you end up going to be in the same situation as before. These tools aren't magic wands. Before you do anything with a tool, you need to make sure your business is primed and ready to receive that tool as an enabler to help you achieve the things you want to do with your business. So that work up front is saying: right, what do we need to change in our business in order to make it work more efficiently? And then this tool is going to be an accelerator to that efficiency. You also need to take into account all the stuff you need to be doing around change management — talking to the people, really understanding, from the people who are going to be affected by this and the people creating the value: what is useful to them, what will enable them to do their jobs better. If you have to talk about changing roles and what people are doing, really understand that. There's an enormous amount of preparation work. There's a famous quote — I can't remember who quoted it — that if someone says you've got five hours to chop down a tree, you spend the first four hours sharpening your axe. That preparation is completely undervalued. Then there's the work that needs to happen during the implementation. Having people on board as part of the process means it becomes something people are pulling, rather than something being done to them. And afterwards as well, it's not something you just drop on people and say good luck and expect it to bear fruit. You have to work with it, close the gaps around things you weren't able to foresee. If you're talking about technology, and different types of technology, and you're trying to build connected enterprises — there's not one system that will connect the enterprise from end to end. So there's a lot of system integration, and that drives a lot of challenges around system compatibility and information compatibility. A lot of the time, that's an afterthought. It's an evolving picture as well — it's not like you just do this one day across the board and it all works. You might be changing one system at a time. It's a really challenging time for businesses at the moment. --- MYRIAM JENNY: Do you think the pandemic has affected the PLM sector in any way? ROB FERRONE: What we're seeing is that people are doing the emergency first aid — putting in place things they need to do to survive and get through the immediate period. We're beyond that now, and there's a lot of strategic thinking going on around: if we haven't got our workforce in the same place, as a business, how can we change our business model, and what role does digitalisation play in that? At the same time, people haven't got large budgets to kick off big strategic initiatives, unless you're a big company with deep pockets — VW group, for example, can still do those strategic initiatives. Because the environment is shifting, there's a danger that if you try to devise a strategy for the next five years, by the time you're out of the blocks it's a different world. What we're finding is really successful is the "build it as you go" approach. You have a direction, an approach, a place where you want to get to — but you do it step by step. Best-case scenario: you use any programmes or projects you've already got running, and use those improvements to deliver those projects faster. You get instant feedback on whether that concept or tool will actually do what you thought. If you're doing those strategic improvements, they'll pay off in the short term because you're getting product to market faster, or with better quality, or more efficiently. Then you can feed those lessons learned into the next project. So it's doing improvement as you go — more of a lean-thinking form of doing things. MYRIAM JENNY: I agree. Do you think this pandemic has pushed forward or accelerated the trend towards cloud PLM somehow? ROB FERRONE: Honestly, it's hard to see how much the pandemic has accelerated it. There was a trend in that direction anyway. The logic says: if you haven't got people on premise, and it doesn't work to have your PLM on premise, cloud is a natural way forward. For small companies that might be easy. For bigger companies, or companies that have legacy, it's harder — there's a lot of things to think about: how you get your information long-term. I think there will be a slight positive increase to the trend, but it's hard to say exactly the scale of that acceleration. MYRIAM JENNY: Of course. It's still too early to know. --- MYRIAM JENNY: All right, I have just one last question. What one piece of advice would you give to a PLM manager or PLM team struggling to get the PLM system accepted and used by users? ROB FERRONE: My advice to anyone trying to deploy PLM into a business is: you have to see the users as the customers. Many people when they're trying to deploy PLM are thinking about it with an IT hat on. It's usually an IT-led initiative, but I think they need to see the users as the customers. Having the wisdom of how this is going to benefit the business, saying: right, this thing is going to benefit the business so let's do it — but we're only going to be successful if the users find this to be better for them and to help them deliver their jobs more effectively. Otherwise it will become something that's hated, and people will end up spending more time in the system than doing the creative part of their job. You have to get the users on board early on, and also involve them in the speccing of what they need in order to be empowered to deliver for the company. That's the most important thing. MYRIAM JENNY: Absolutely. Well, thank you very much for all your answers. I have one last question: how can people learn more about QR, and what's the best way to get in touch with you? ROB FERRONE: Obviously, go onto our website. Or email me directly — rob.ferrone@quickrelease.de. You can find me on LinkedIn, drop me a message. You can find the company on LinkedIn as well — contact anyone in your region, we're all super-friendly people, and we'd love to work with you. MYRIAM JENNY: Awesome. Thank you so much, and we'll speak to you soon. Bye. ROB FERRONE: Bye. --- HOST OUTRO: Thank you for listening to the SharePLM podcast. We hope you enjoyed this episode. Be sure to visit shareplm.com/podcast to join the conversation, access the show notes and links. Head over to your podcast platform to subscribe, rate, and leave a review on our podcast — it's very much appreciated. Thank you very much and see you at the next episode.